Track & Field Sprint Training

Hey everyone! Just signed up and would like some advice and suggestions on what I'm currently doing and if I'm on the right track.

I'm looking to train for a track & field competition this summer, specifically the 200 and 400 meters, at the age of 30. I ran these in high school (not college) and earned about a 23" and 53" respectively for PBs. Unfortunately, now I'm at around 200 lbs (? body fat, guessing 15% or slightly more) at 5'10", and even though I can still move pretty quick, with rapid turnover in the legs, 200 lbs is a lot to lug around for the 200 meters. The 400 more so. I was down to about 195 before the holidays, and well, I abandoned any discipline then, but am slowly coming back down. Other than falling off the nutritional wagon every now and again, I work out regularly, with a mix of high intensity and steady-state routines. I'm fit enough to do HIIT.

My goal is 175 lbs, 7-8% body fat, running those same times (or close) by June. I'm looking to strike a balance of weight/fat loss without sacrificing sprint speed/power.

One major problem specific to the event is I have no access to a track during winter. My local alma-mater has a new indoor track facility, but they only allow current students to use, no alumni. Otherwise, my options for winter cardio are limited. Once spring hits, I will be hitting the outdoor tracks ASAP.

CURRENT WORKOUTS: I've been doing most of my workouts this winter on my rower. I bought one last year and up until recently have mostly been doing steady state, hour-long low-to-medium intensity rows (avg 750-850 calories burned according to the readout, with damper at 5). The past few weeks though I've been incorporating more HIIT. One workout is 3 sets of 10 x fifteen seconds hard, fifteen seconds easy with two minutes rest between sets. Another is a pyramid routine of 4 minute warmup, 1 minute hard as possible, 1 min easy, 2 hard, 2 easy, 3 hard, 3 easy, 2 hard, 2 e, 1 h, 1 e, 2 h, 2 e, 3 h, cooldown. If I'm pressed for time, I try to squeeze in a tabata-style row with the damper on 10, then 20 seconds on, 10 off, for a four minute bout. Finally, there's the 5 reps of 1 minute as hard as I possibly can row with 5 min rest in between, damper at 7 (trying to simulate something with a similar length of time as the 400 run itself).

Another caveat is that I don't have a gym membership. That will change within a month, and I plan on incorporating mostly squats, deadlifts, power-cleans, bench, pull-ups, and some ab work at that time. Until then, everything has been mostly body weight. I either do 3 sets of 50 pushups with 1 min rest between before a rower workout, or a squat circuit of 20 air squats, 20 standing lunges (10 ea/), 20 side lunges (10 ea/), 5 squat jumps, rest, 20 air squats, 12 walking lunges, 20 air squats, rest, 16 bulgarian split squats (8 ea/), rest, 16 bulgarian split squats (8 ea/). At the end of either of those two, I finish off with 90+ second plank, and 45 second side planks each side.

As I mentioned, I will be getting a gym membership soon, and one thing I'm considering for cardio during winter is the treadmill with 2 mile runs at 7:30/mile pace several days a week to get my weight down. Not sure if I should be emphasizing those kinds of workouts more, or the HIIT…I've lurked on quite a few threads arguing the merits of both.

CURRENT NUTRITION: Below is my recent diet, which I've been trying to balance to keep on the low-cost threshold. I can't speak to the logic of the timing, I just kind of figured the times when I'm hungry. Also, I take late lunches, but can adjust.

Definitely open to nutrition suggestions. I am bored to tears with this.

Jesus. Apologies for the length, I just want to be thorough. Again, I want to stress a balance between weight loss to get down to 175 with a low body fat percentage, but still maintain my current sprint power.